What's with "the Garden Isle"? Kauaʻi is the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands — some five million years of weather have had the longest to work on it, and it shows. Near the island's center, Mount Waiʻaleʻale catches the trade winds and rings up among the wettest places on Earth, and all that rain has to go somewhere: it has cut the red-walled chasm of Waimea Canyon, fluted the green sea cliffs of the Nā Pali Coast, and filled the taro valleys of the north shore. The result is an island so lush it earned a single nickname that has stuck for generations — the Garden Isle. Watch the clouds pile up on Waiʻaleʻale and you are watching the machine that built the scenery.
Kauaʻi holds a place apart in Hawaiian history: it is the one main island King Kamehameha never took by force. Twice he massed great fleets to invade across the channel, and twice he was turned back — once by a storm, once by an epidemic that swept his army. In 1810, rather than face another war, Kauaʻi's ruling chief, King Kaumualiʻi, negotiated a peaceful agreement that brought the island into the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi while he continued to govern it. The story of the island that was joined by agreement, never conquered, is still a point of Kauaian pride.
Why People Visit Kauaʻi
People come to Kauaʻi for the oldest, greenest island in the chain and the quieter pace that comes with it. It rewards travelers who would rather hike a canyon rim or paddle a north-shore bay than chase a crowd — a place of waterfalls, taro valleys, and emerald cliffs, with a deep Hawaiian history and a slower, garden kind of aloha.
